Ring of Fire - Horseshoe Bend

On May 20, 2012 - I captured this remarkable event of the Annular Solar Eclipse at Horseshoe Bend in Northern Arizona. I wanted this image to tell the epic story of the circle of time, with grandeur of the great bend of the Colorado and the blazing ring of fire in the sky.
I’ve been developing a technique that would render images with three improved attributes:extreme high dynamic range, consistent color tonality, and extreme resolution.
This large 1.78 gigabyte composite image measuring 22500x14250. That is the equivalent of capturing this image with a 320 megabit CCD. This image is made from about 48 images, 30 frames were shot with a Canon 5dmk3 with a 24mm lens with a 3 frame per shot in-camera HDR that make up the body of the image and 18 frames shot with a Canon 5dmk2 with a 400mm for the composited eclipse of the sun in place over the canyon.
What make this a fun image is the hundreds of photographers all capturing this extraordinary event lining the canyon rim with a thousand foot drop down to the Colorado River below. If you could zoom into the high resolution data of the image you would see a sandbar just across the river, you would see two guys in canoes on the beach. These guys stayed in the shadow of that mountain and never saw the eclipse at all. I wonder what they thought a thousand photographers were looking at?
If you would be interested in purchasing a high quality print (it looks great on metallic stock) or publish this image. Please contact me at: melandercl@gmail.com Thank you for respecting my Copyright. Thank you. Clint